Working up an appetite for lionfish: A market-based approach to manage the invasion of Pterois volitans in Belize

Located on the Caribbean coast of Central America and flanked by the second longest barrier reef in the world, Belize is a nation reliant upon marine resources. Each year, the country’s predominantly small-scale fisheries generate an estimated US$22 million in revenue – 1.8%of GDP – and employ 3000 people. However, the nation’s fishing communities are facing an unprecedented challenge. Existing threats posed by declining fish stocks have been exacerbated by the introduction of the invasive alien red lionfish Pterois volitans in 2008. This Indo-Pacific predator has the potential to cause significant losses to the recruitment of native fish, in turn disrupting coral reef community dynamics in the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Howefver, targeted lionfish fishing may offer a cost effective means to control the invasion, while also creating an alternative livelihood solution and improving food security among Belize's coastal fishing communities. This study summarises the recent history of the lionfish invasion in Belize, describes the multi-sector approach being used to address the invasion, and presents preliminary research summarising the characteristics of invasive alien lionfish in Belize. Data from Belize's nascent ‘lionfishery’ are also presented, demonstrating that demand for lionfish is outweighing supply – largely as a result of awareness-raising initiatives – and highlighting the strong potential for replication of this approach elsewhere in the Caribbean. The study concludes by discussing the barriers and potential solutions to this market-based approach to invasive species management.     

Distribution and feeding ecology of three juvenile mojarras in a hypersaline tropical estuary in Northeastern Brazil

Although mojarra species usually demonstrate a wide distribution in tropical and subtropical estuaries, relatively little is known about the process influencing the spatial resource partitioning to nearshore habitats. Therefore, the aim of this study was check the existence of habitat and food partitioning among confamiliar species in a hypersaline estuary. The dietary compositions of three co‐occurring species of mojarras were determined, using samples collected with a beach seine from an inverse tropical estuary in Northeastern Brazil, during the rainy and the dry seasons of 2012. Eucinostomus argenteus and Ulaema lefroyi were abundant throughout the year, while Eugerres brasilianus was most abundant during the rainy season. Although these mojarras were found together in all areas of the estuary, there was evidence of habitat partitioning: E. argenteus and E. brasilianus were dominant in areas with submerged vegetation, while U. lefroyi was most abundant in areas with little habitat complexity and minimal shelter. All mojarras consumed, to different degrees, zooplankton, Bivalvia and Polychaeta. However, E. brasilanus also consumed a considerable amount of algae. Although the niches of the mojarra species appeared to significantly overlap, some resource partitioning patterns were apparent. While E. brasilanus was clearly different along the trophic niche, segregation of the other species was more important with respect to the spatial dimension. The different feeding strategies appear to minimize inter‐specific overlap and allow the co‐occurrence of these species in this hypersaline tropical estuary.     

Cape cormorants decrease,move east and adapt foraging strategies following eastward displacement of their main prey

Numbers of Cape cormorants Phalacrocorax capensis breeding in South Africa decreased by nearly 50% from approximately 107 000 pairs in 1977–1981 to 57 000 pairs in 2010–2014. Although four colonies had >10 000 pairs in 1977–1981, there was just one such colony in 2010–2014. Almost all the decrease occurred after the early 1990s off north-west South Africa, between the Orange River estuary and Dassen Island. South of this, the number breeding in the two periods was stable, with some colonies being formed or growing rapidly in the 2000s. The proportion of South Africa’s Cape cormorants that bred south of Dassen Island increased from 35% in 1977–1981 to 66% in 2010–2014, with the opposite situation observed in the north-west. This matched a shift to the south and east in the distributions of two of the Cape cormorant’s main prey species, anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus and sardine Sardinops sagax. In 2014, an apparent scarcity of prey in the north-west resulted in Cape cormorants attempting to take bait from hooks of fishing lines over an extended period, a behaviour not previously recorded. The number of Cape cormorants breeding in the south may be constrained by the absence of large islands between Dyer Island in the west and Algoa Bay in the east. If so, it may be possible to bolster the southern population through the provision of appropriate breeding habitat, such as platforms, or restricting human disturbance at suitable mainland cliff breeding sites.     

多GNSS精密单点定位性能分析

在实现BDS/GPS/GLONASS组合精密单点定位的基础上,模拟多种遮挡环境;利用3个MGEX测站的数据进行三系统组合PPP试验;并在可见卫星数、PDOP值、定位精度、收敛时间和定位可用性等方面与GPS单系统PPP进行了比较分析。结果表明:在亚太地区,相比于GPS单系统PPP,三系统组合PPP可见卫星数增加了2~3倍,PDOP值显著减小。动态试验中,在无遮挡环境下,三系统组合PPP相较于GPS PPP收敛时间更短,且收敛后定位精度更高;在遮挡环境下,GPS PPP性能急剧下降,三系统组合PPP较好的保证了定位精度,提高了系统定位可用性。     

HLJCORS系统性能测试与分析

通过定位精度测试、可用性测试和兼容性测试,本文分析评估了HLJCORS的实时和事后定位精度、空间可用性、时间可用性以及兼容性。测试表明,HLJCORS测试精度均达到或优于设计要求,可为黑龙江省建立统一的现代化测绘基准提供重要支撑。     

Land-use futures in the shared socio-economic pathways

In the future, the land system will be facing new intersecting challenges. While food demand, especially for resource-intensive livestock based commodities, is expected to increase, the terrestrial system has large potentials for climate change mitigation through improved agricultural management, providing biomass for bioenergy, and conserving or even enhancing carbon stocks of ecosystems. However, uncertainties in future socio-economic land use drivers may result in very different land-use dynamics and consequences for land-based ecosystem services. This is the first study with a systematic interpretation of the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs) in terms of possible land-use changes and their consequences for the agricultural system, food provision and prices as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, five alternative Integrated Assessment Models with distinctive land-use modules have been used for the translation of the SSP narratives into quantitative projections. The model results reflect the general storylines of the SSPs and indicate a broad range of potential land-use futures with global agricultural land of 4900 mio ha in 2005 decreasing by 743 mio ha until 2100 at the lower (SSP1) and increasing by 1080 mio ha (SSP3) at the upper end. Greenhouse gas emissions from land use and land use change, as a direct outcome of these diverse land-use dynamics, and agricultural production systems differ strongly across SSPs (e.g. cumulative land use change emissions between 2005 and 2100 range from −54 to 402 Gt CO₂). The inclusion of land-based mitigation efforts, particularly those in the most ambitious mitigation scenarios, further broadens the range of potential land futures and can strongly affect greenhouse gas dynamics and food prices. In general, it can be concluded that low demand for agricultural commodities, rapid growth in agricultural productivity and globalized trade, all most pronounced in a SSP1 world, have the potential to enhance the extent of natural ecosystems, lead to lowest greenhouse gas emissions from the land system and decrease food prices over time. The SSP-based land use pathways presented in this paper aim at supporting future climate research and provide the basis for further regional integrated assessments, biodiversity research and climate impact analysis.     

A physically-based model of long-term food demand

Reducing hunger while staying within planetary boundaries of pollution, land use and fresh water use is one of the most urgent sustainable development goals. It is imperative to understand future food demand, the agricultural system, and the interactions with other natural and human systems. Studying such interactions in the long-term future is often done with Integrated Assessment Modelling. In this paper we develop a new food demand model to make projections several decades ahead, having 46 detailed food categories and population segmented by income and urban vs rural. The core of our model is a set of relationships between income and dietary patterns, with differences between regions and income inequalities within a region. Hereby we take a different, more long-term-oriented approach than elasticity-based macro-economic models (Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) and Partial Equilibrium (PE) models). The physical and detailed nature of our model allows for fine-grained scenario exploration. We first apply the model to the newly developed Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSP) scenarios, and then to additional sustainable development scenarios of food waste reduction and dietary change. We conclude that total demand for crops and grass could increase roughly 35–165% between 2010 and 2100, that this future demand growth can be tempered more effectively by replacing animal products than by reducing food waste, and that income-based consumption inequality persists and is a contributing factor to our estimate that 270 million people could still be undernourished in 2050.     

Analysis of food retail patterns in urban,peri-urban and rural settings: A case study from Lebanon

Existing evidence on food retail expansion in developing countries is largely based on cross-country studies. This may be excellent to provide general pictures but less relevant for development planners to tailor context-specific interventions. We apply a meso-level analysis to address three questions: (i) Are modern food retail formats impeding the expansion of the traditional ones? (ii) What is the pattern of food retail expansion into urban, peri-urban, and rural areas? (iii) What factors influence observed food retail patterns? The study was carried out within the geographic landscape of Lebanon, a commercial link between the Middle East and Europe. Historical analysis shows increased growth both in the modern and traditional food retail sales, with the former modestly outpacing the latter. However, data from the last five years indicate the gap being reduced to 2 percentage points, displaying a clear leveling-off as compared to the preceding decade. Thus, we find insufficient evidence to conclude that modern food retail formats are definitively replacing traditional ones. An extremely high spatial disparity in food retail concentration is observed across governorates and districts, suggesting a need for flexible policies for viable food system development in various contexts. Expansion of modern food retail formats is limited by geography or socioeconomic groups, while traditional formats are equally present in urban, peri-urban and rural settings, including high poverty areas. This suggests a need for recognizing the latter as alternative institutions to address specific needs of consumers, particularly in poorer neighborhoods or rural areas. The findings are relevant for international, regional, and domestic food retailers to understand food retail patterns in Lebanon, for development planners to tailor specific interventions in areas where food establishments are least developed, and for researchers to investigate the impact of such patterns on nutritional transformations among the Lebanese urban, peri-urban and rural populations.     

A comparison of raster-based travel time surfaces against vector-based network calculations as applied in the study of rural food deserts

While the term food insecurity is gaining popularity in contemporary literature, there is debate as to how tenets of this phenomenon can be quantitatively measured. One of these tenets, proximity to food resources, which is used to measure food deserts, can be measured within a digital GIS (Geographic Information System). Metrics such as Euclidean and network distance represent planimetric distance measurements between locations and resources, but do not truly represent the empirical cost that serves as a barrier, most notably time and/or money, to those who must decide to travel to these resources. While the vector data model has been the standard by which these calculations are done within a GIS, raster-based travel time surfaces can serve as a faster, replicable and scalable alternative. However, little research has been done to test the efficacy of these surfaces and their alignment with vector-based network calculations. In this research, we developed two travel-time surfaces for a rural region in southeastern North Carolina. One represented travel times to grocery stores and while the other represented travel time to convenience stores. We found that the travel times derived from this surface were statistically consistent with vector-based counterparts for sample sizes at a 95% confidence. When utilized correctly using an appropriate scale and spatial resolution, these surfaces have the potential to be effective tools in the study of food deserts.